GERMANY
Forecast revisions expected
The nation’s economy will expand faster than expected this year, a minister said yesterday, amid reports that the IMF and Berlin would revise up forecasts for Europe’s top economy. Spiegel newsweekly said both the German government and the IMF are now banking on growth of 2.5 percent this year. Berlin is hoping for at least 2.0 percent nest year as Europe’s economic powerhouse motors ahead. The IMF’s previous forecast in November was for 2.2 percent. The official German forecast of 2.3 percent will be updated on Thursday.
AUTOMOBILES
China car sales rise 9%
China’s passenger-car sales to dealerships in the first quarter rose 9.1 percent from a year earlier to 3.8 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The nation’s total vehicle sales rose 8.1 percent to 5 million units during January to last month, according to the center. China’s car sales growth this year may fall short of a previous estimate for a 10 percent to 15 percent increase, CAAM deputy head Dong Yang (董揚) said at a briefing in Beijing yesterday.
SOUTH KOREA
Hacking numbers may rise
Hyundai Capital Services Inc., a financial unit of South Korea’s biggest carmaker, said the number of clients whose information was hacked by an unidentified person may exceed the 420,000 estimate as of Friday. Some clients’ credit information may have been hacked, the company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Hyundai Capital is tightening security to prevent further hacking attempts, and assisting a police investigation, the company said.
ENERGY
Billiton in Shell talks
BHP Billiton Ltd is in talks to buy Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s stake in Woodside Petroleum Ltd and make a full takeover offer worth A$46 billion (US$48.6 billion) for Australia’s second-biggest oil and gas producer as commodity prices surge, the Sunday Times reported yesterday. BHP would swap some of Woodside’s best assets, including the Sunrise gas field, in return for Shell’s 24 percent stake in the company, the UK paper reported, citing unidentified people close to the situation. BHP spokeswoman Amanda Buckley, Woodside spokeswoman Linda Hammer and Shell spokeswoman Claire Wilkinson all declined to comment.
KUWAIT
Profits for listed firms jump
Combined profits of firms listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange rose sharply last year after two years of modest gains due to the global financial crisis, an economic report said yesterday. The 174 firms that have announced results so far posted a total net profit of 1.72 billion dinars (US$6.2 billion) last year, up 211 percent from 553.9 million dinars in 2009, Al-Shall Economic Consultants said. Last year’s profits include 740.8 million dinars in extraordinary gains made by the Zain telecoms company from the sale of its African operations, Al-Shall said.
GREECE
Brazil talks energy, tourism
An official said the leaders of Brazil and Greece have discussed possible investments in the energy and tourism sectors. Prime Minister George Papandreou held talks with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is on a one-day visit to Athens on her way to China. An aide said, on condition of anonymity, the agenda of the talks included Greece’s economy, renewable energy sources, tourism and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts